swallow.
'Life,' the former deputy observed, 'would be a good deal pleasanter if we had some coffee.' He closed his eyes and dreamed for a moment. 'Or whiskey.'
The sun had fallen behind the bank of thunderheads. A steely grayness settled on the land, and there was no breath of movement in the air. The hush was so intense that they could hear each other breathing—or imagined that they could. 'I'm beginnin' to wish,' Wompler said to himself, 'that I'd stayed where I was, back at the Day and Night.' The reddish water of the Little Wichita shone dully, like sheet metal.
Suddenly the wind scent of ozone was in the air. In the distance there was a rustle of wind, faint but ominous. Wompler hunched his head down between his shoulders and groaned. 'Here she comes!'
By common consent they had not built a fire. Without coffee, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. Anyway, they both felt more comfortable behind a cover of darkness. Gault buttoned his windbreaker to the throat, pulled his hat down firmly on his forehead and settled himself for a miserable night.
The first fat raindrop struck the river underbrush like a liquid bullet. Then there was another sound. Gault heard it, listened to it dully. Suddenly, with wrenching pain in his side, he lurched to his feet. 'Somebody's after the horses!'
He grabbed the Winchester and jacked a cartridge into the chamber with one motion. Wompler already had his .45 in his hand. For a moment he was as taut as a finely tuned fiddle. Then, just as suddenly, he relaxed. 'It's Torgason. I told you he'd be watchin' us.'
The stock detective appeared in a stand of gaudy sumac. He bulled his way through the brush and ducked beneath the shelf as the first wave of the storm swept over them. Torgason, his saddle on his left shoulder, his rifle in his hand, stood looking at them with a wooden-faced stare. He eased the saddle to the ground but did not put aside the rifle. 'I knowed you'd manage to find a soft place for yourself, Wompler. Don't mind if I set a while, do you?'
Wompler smiled his heatless smile. 'Proud to have you. If you brought some coffee.'
Thunder broke over their heads and rain fell in shimmering sheets. 'Plenty of coffee,' the detective told them. 'Dry salt meat, and cornmeal, too. Now, if somebody thought to bring in some firewood before the rain started…'
Wompler groaned. Somehow the discomfort of their cold, damp cave was made even less appealing, knowing that hot trail fare was there within easy reach. If they could only have built a fire.
Torgason turned to Gault, and Gault met the detective's chilly stare with one of his own. 'Seems like you didn't have much trouble finding us.'
'Not much,' Torgason rested his rifle on his saddle. 'I've been watchin' you since we split up at the Garnett place.'
'Would you mind tellin' us what makes us so interestin'?'
Torgason looked as if he might smile, but he didn't. 'Wompler here's a suspected cattle rustler—that's always interestin' to a stock detective. And there's some things about you, too, Gault. A stranger lands in New Boston on the day Wolf Garnett's buried, bustin' full of questions that's none of his business. On top of everything else, by your own word, you killed a county official.'
'A posseman.'
'A paid official. As legal, according to county law, as the sheriff hisself.'
'I didn't know you'd took to readin' law,' Wompler said dryly.
Torgason ignored him. 'You killed him,' he said to Gault. 'And the sheriff let you go. I find that interestin'.'
Gault felt anger rising in his throat, but he choked it down. The old line rider had said that Torgason could help him, and he didn't want to fight with anyone who might be able to do that. Harry Wompler regarded the two with a loose smile and seemed totally undisturbed. 'Don't mind Torgason,' he said lazily. 'He likes to get folks riled. In the hopes they'll spout somethin' he can hang them with later.'
More thunder rumbled in the darkness. Beyond the shelf the rain was driving down like silver spikes.
Wompler yawned. 'If you boys can stand the loss of my company, I think I'll catch myself some sleep.' He untied his roll and threw it on the ground next to the riverbank.
Gault and the detective sat with their backs to the rock, staring out at the storm. 'How'd you come to get tied up with Wompler?' Torgason asked when the silence became uncomfortable.
'Same way I heard about you. Yorty told me about him.'
'That old man,' Torgason said coldly, 'has got a big mouth.'
For some time the two men crouched in uncomfortable silence. Between gusting attacks of the storm they could hear Wompler snoring. When Torgason finally decided to speak, his tone was controlled and thoughtful. 'I've been thinkin'. It must of been on a night like this that you talked to Wirt Sewell.'
'Just about. But darker.'
'And again when you heard what you thought was a shot.'
'That was a dream—about the storm, anyway.' Gault studied him cautiously. 'Why do you ask?'
'Like Wompler said, it's my job to be suspicious.'
For some time they crouched silently, watching the storm. Then Torgason said abruptly, 'Tell me again about Colly Fay. The things you found in his saddle pocket.'
Gault had already gone over this part of the story, but apparently Torgason was still unsatisfied. Patiently, Gault collected his thoughts and prepared to cover the ground again. 'There was the ring, the one I gave to my wife. I told you about that.' Torgason, a crouching shadow backlighted by sheet lightning, nodded. Gault went on. 'There were six double-eagles, and some other coins. A roll of greenbacks wrapped in oilskin. A silver pocketknife, the kind a city dude might carry for cuttin' cigars. Woman's earrings, set with glassy sparkles. Maybe diamonds. A string of milk-colored beads that might have been pearls.'
'Is that all?'
Gault drove his memory back to that bitter moment when he had opened the little buckskin pouch and found the ring. 'No, there was a watch.'
The big-shouldered shadow cocked its head thoughtfully. 'What about the watch?'
Gault could see it lying there on the dirty flannel shirt, surrounded by Colly's other items of loot. 'It was gold—yellow gold—stem-wound, with a gold face cover. There was a heavy gold chain that must of cost the owner plenty, if it was real gold. There was some writing—engraving—on the face cover.'
Torgason's shadow came almost rigidly erect. 'What did it say?'
'It was foreign writin' of some kind; I couldn't read it.' He thought for a moment. 'Somethin' about a fort.'
Wompler, who had been snoring only a moment before, sat up on his blanket and said, '
And Torgason said—with something like a drawn-out sigh—'General Mallard Springfield Heath.' He lurched to his feet and stared out at the night. The rain was still coming down. 'What,' he asked in a curiously flat tone, 'did the sheriff say when he saw that watch?'
'Olsen?' Gault tried to think back to the moment when he had dumped the parcel on the sheriff's table. 'Nothin' special that I recollect. He just looked at it and wanted to know where I got it. Look here,' he said, irritated by the air of mystery that had suddenly built up inside the cave, 'what's this about forts and generals? What do they have to do with Colly Fay and the sheriff?'
'Not forts,' Wompler drawled with the dry superiority of the half-educated. 'Fortes fortuna juvat. 'Fortune favors the brave.' The motto of General Heath's cavalry regiment, when he was a colonel. Before he was promoted to general and got hisself killed.'
Torgason turned to Gault and asked sharply. 'You never heard of General Mallard Heath?'
Gault glanced from one dark, tense figure to the other. 'No, I never heard of him. I guess maybe it's time I did.'
Torgason had turned back to the storm and was glaring out at the slanting rain. Harry Wompler undertook to
